Life on a Round the World Cruise

So in between all these magical ports and locations we have days at sea and life on a 4 month cruise to share with you.

We had never been on an MSC cruise before so this was a first time for us and lots and lots of things have been different. Very different!

Let's start with the many nationalities on board. Since the cruise left from Rome we have a ton of French and German passengers and the British, Canadians and Americans are most definitely the minority. The ship has two places to eat which is pretty ridiculous. I mean you are on a ship for 4 months so you'd expect a few specialty restaurants - a steakhouse? Italian? Nope not on this ship We have a buffet and a main dining room. And for those who know me - my taste buds are pretty non existent so when I say the food is bad - you have to know it's pretty awful. You'd think as an Italian line they'd get Italian right but nope - not happening. We have not starved but let's say each port requires a great local restaurant stop, a supermarket stop and Dre's 3 jars of Peanut Butter and 3 Jars of Jelly and my snack packs. Our room fridge is tiny and is currently stocked with my insulin so our options for what we buy on land are limited. Note to anyone who travels in a hotel or cruise and uses the fridge - if there is a furniture/wooden door on top of the fridge have it removed. The wood furniture keeps the heat insulated and we learnt the hard way many cruises ago when my insulin was lukewarm to have them remove the door on day 1.

Each sea day comes with a myriad of activities none of which we have participated in. Dre goes to the gym and has picked up "bridge" and become a "card shark" while I have found doing 50 laps in the pool among the many older European men in Speedos and ladies who should have given up the bikini look years ago!

Our room is a nice size with a bed area, sitting area and balcony. The décor is circa 1980 and needs a serious remodel. Apparently the USA MSC ships are brand spanking new with tons of restaurants, slides, robot bartenders and high tech casinos. Let's just say this old lady needs new carpeting and a serious update.

We've definitely experienced some insane behavior on this cruise and have people like one lady who apparently holds court each morning at reception with her complaints of the day and wears a pin badge the size of a melon on her shirt "Please offer me your seat"! To another woman who told another passenger to "fuck off" on the Santiago bus tour because she was yapping too much for her liking. To so many people on board who conveniently forget how to speak English, think nothing of shoving you out of the way at the buffet or any line for that matter and who have zero idea that people come OUT of the elevator before your ass shoves INTO the lift. The level of rudeness is honestly what has been the most shocking on this trip. Americans get a bad rap when we travel - that we are loud, don't try and accommodate that we are in a foreign country etc - well let me tell you after this trip I never want to hear how awful we are when we travel. We are SAINTS compared to some of these people and if this ship goes down - women and children would not be first I can assure you. I have named this trip Lord of the Flies Senior Edition. They've all gone native and get worse by the day. Dre has had to block people to allow me to get off the bus or the shuttle tender, I have had women sneak into lines and when confronted are apparently now "deaf" and cannot hear me. We started off the strip being super polite and accommodating - well 2 months in that is out the window and we just don't care anymore. They are rude and we now point it out in real time!

A great example was our day in Napier, New Zealand. It started to pour with rain at the end of the day and we had to shuttle back to the ship! The line was at least 200+ people long and I wasn't feeling great. I checked my sugar levels and was at over 400 and needed insulin. I went to inject myself only to realize it was an empty vial! So I panicked. We weren't even in the line yet. I saw one of the security guards in line (she was off the ship on her off time) and I ran to her and said I desperately needed to get back on the ship to get insulin. She was incredible - her mother has diabetes so she understood. She ran up to the front of the bus yelling "medical emergency - this woman needs insulin" to receive back the glares and growls of dozens of passengers. Dre was right behind me as I got on the bus when I heard a man say "Your wife is sick not you - why do you need to go with her?" WTF??? I turned back and yelled "ok so when I fall over on my way to my room you assure me you'll carry me yes??? Andre get on!" He yelled some profanity my way which I could care less about but this is the attitude of many on board. Entitled, arrogant, pushing, shoving, rude and unpleasant. MSC doesn't help with their disorganization.

On the island of Aitutaki in the Cook Islands - it was 100 degrees out with a burning sun and we had to tender back to the ship (take smaller boats) and there were hundreds in line to get back. No shade cover was provided and people looked and probably got very sick. Offering passengers paper cups of water wasn't going to help but maybe setting up a few more tents might have.

Our room steward Miguel is from Madagascar and has had it pretty easy with us as there are days after Ports when I am so tired I cannot get out of bed and this trip from South America to the Polynesian Islands we lost an hour each day for almost 5 days straight - which was GREAT for me. I got to wake up at 8am which was really noon and not miss a thing!

Andre aka "the friendliest guy" in the ship knows every waiter, waitress, guest relations employee, bartender, room attendant. When I do leave the room which is seldom on sea days I have to deal with literally every employee greeting him "Hi Mr Andre how are you today?". We joke he should run for Mayor of the Ship. He brings back 3 magnets from each Port for his 3 favorite employees who don't get off much and definitely don't have the extra $$ for a magnet! They love it and him. It's kinda cute!

I on the other hand am not the social butterfly so when I do venture out it is to go to the dining room, buffet or the Cyber cafe where we get the best wifi. Now I use the word "Best" loosely. The Wifi on board is beyond awful. If you've tried to message me or call me on this trip -you know! You have to stand on your head and lean 30 degrees to the right or left and maybe just maybe you'll get a signal. I joke you not!

Don't bother trying to watch Netflix or stream anything and for what they charge you on here for "streaming" wifi it's pretty disappointing. So at each port we try and download a few more episodes of whatever we are watching to get us through a few days. TV on board is the following MSNBC, BBC, BBC Lifestyle, 1 English Movie channel - with movies from as far back as Shirley Temple to Planet of the Apes to Bandidos (a Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz movie that was so bad I don't even remember it being released) or for shits and giggles Titanci and the Poseidon Adventure. WTF??

OH and they play the same move 2-3 times in the same day so little me who spends much time in the room is reading a lot, watching too many shows on nature and old episodes of the British soap Eastenders and oh the last 5 nights the 2017 Season of The Great Pottery Throw Down! Most of the time it's 24 hours of Discovery Channel meets National Geographic - so ask me anything about living life in Alaska, how to tell the sex of a bird, how a lion hunts its prey, what shipwreck was found in 2020, the Tauranga Zoo's spider breeding program, where the best place to go in African for a safari, how to shoot a moose, how to track a fox, how monkey's use little leaves to pull ants out of trees, the pregnancy of a giraffe and how to move Rhinos and I can answer all your questions! And more I assure you.

I have a system for keeping our room clean - my OCD goes into overdrive some days. Dre's clothes are on 1/2 the sofa, there's a special bag for souvenirs, medication in a special box and the bathroom is so small I have given up on makeup and settled with a layer of face cream and sunscreen and call it a day! I bought a laundry hamper in one of our South American stops and that has proven very useful!

One issue I was worried about was my hair. I had it colored before we left but knew with how fast my hair grows it would only be a matter of weeks before the grey came in and apparently two months means 2" of a MASSIVE grey halo around my head - thank god for photoshop! I was going to use the salon on board but after seeing how bad some of the women looked coming out I was terrified. I tried head scarves, headbands and then the ship ran out of color altogether! We were going to be in New Zealand so I looked for a salon that carried Goldwell hair color as I have my formula - I managed to find a place in Tauranga but I was worried when I realized it was 50 minutes away and when I said in an email I need my roots done - the reply I got was "can you explain what you mean?'. UGH wasn't feeling super confident. Then I found a store that sold hair supplies and explained my situation to the incredibly sweet shopgirl who only had to look at my hair to understand the drama.... She suggested a root spray I have seen in the US but we would have had to use a can a day and it would have just been a ring of darker color around my head. She then mentioned an Australian company called De Lorenzo and this line of color shampoo they make. All natural so if you don't like it a few washes and it's out. She suggested I try the intense brunette and that it would turn my grey to a warm brown. Skeptical that such a miracle existed I went back to the ship and did it according to the directions of leave on your head for 5 minutes - so disappointed it did absolutely nothing. The next day in Napier I went into another hair salon and they said to leave it on as long as I could - 30 minutes even. So this morning I did just that and OMG OMG voila - my hair is brown and while there are a few strays of grey - I look like I had my hair colored. I am so bummed they don't sell in the USA because not only would this shampoo save me a fortune in coloring my hair but it's all natural so limits the damage. I ordered it online and am praying it reaches our Sydney hotel before we do!

We find ways around things on board and funny you'd think sea days would be slow and boring but I have used them to recover especially when we have several port stops in a row.

As I said in previous posts we have met a handful of great people - Colette and Erik at the top of that list. We have gotten off the ship in several ports together, had a lot of laughs together and think we've made friends for life. If you recall from our last cruise last year when I wrote about the awful couple we went onshore with for lunch and who I wanted to kill with her "Mussels and Fries" and terrible attempt at French and insulting the poor French waitress - I swore never again would I leave the ship with strangers. But Colette and Erik are the exception and we have a great weekend planned with them in Sydney and are all staying at the same hotel in Bali. I have become the unofficial tour guide/travel planner. Booking tours with locals, arranging for transportation, finding restaurants for us all to try. Erik got Andre into Bridge and Colette has been making video journals of each port that I will share in another post - she is SO good at it and I should have taken her lead as catching up on all these port stops by writing has been a royal pain in my asshole. But if nothing else I wanted to do it for myself and Dre so we could remember each amazing place we have been.

The biggest lesson I have learnt is whether it is a 2 week cruise or 4 months you only need a handful of items to wear, bring extra underwear, deodorant is available in every country as is toothpaste so don't pack enough for 4 months. You might make a pact to only buy postcards and magnets because they are small but you will end up with something from somewhere that is the size of a toaster. Leave room in the suitcase to bring it home. Download a shitload of movies before you get on board for those long sea days. Bring magnet hooks because they work on the walls to hang hats and clothes but stick on ones do not! Make copies of your Passport because the ship will take them and you have zero idea when you will get them back. DO NOT do the ship excursions. They are a cattle call waste of money and do some research - go to sites like Get your Guide or Viator and pick things you want to do. Or grab a cabbie when you get off the ship with a list of places you want to see and negotiate a price for the day. Be adventurous. The ship "stuff" seems safer and easier but it's not any fun. They take you where they want to take you, you are on their time schedule and you stop at stores they have kickbacks with. On your own you meet the locals, eat in local restaurants and see a city or town through their eyes. Talk to your guides and drivers and you will be blown away by their stories. Add them to you WHATSAPP contact list so when friends go there you have a contact for them to connect with. Bring a rechargeable fan - the AC will never get cold enough. Sending postcards sounds cute and fun but finding stamps to mail them is a bitch so ones I bought in Barcelona, wrote in Chile were mailed in Tahiti. Ooops!

While cruise ships are akin to floating hotels - they rock in bad weather and roll with the big waves. Nothing to worry about but it's not always smooth sailing.

But most of all enjoy every port and every stop. Deal with the shitty lines to get on shuttles and the seasickness of the tenders, be nice to the staff who work SO hard 12-14 hours a day to make it the best vacation possible. Fill out the surveys because they actually mean more than the money tip you give them. Gather experiences not things and stop thinking about going on a trip - just go! There are many around the world who are in the business of tourism who had no income for 2+ years in some cases and they are now open and so happy to be welcoming visitors again. Be polite, have common sense and know a room is only so big, two people together 24/7 would kill anyone and so be flexible and remember nice to your travel buddy.

I am blessed we were able to make this trip happen both financially and physically. I am not guaranteed the latter will not be as easy in the years coming up so I am taking full advantage of this - checking things off my bucket list I never imagined I would. Meeting incredible people, taking pics of everything, dreaming of places I would want to go back to or move to if I had another life.

Thanks for coming on the journey with us - we are 1/2 way thought. 2 more months to go! So keep reading.

xoxox

Sam